Posted
by
timothyon Saturday July 24, 2010 @05:57AM
from the be-the-change-you-want-to-see dept.

schliz writes "Corporate web filters in some organizations are blocking web access to the Australian Sex Party, which is a registered political party that is contesting Australia's upcoming August 21 Federal Election. The site features policies and campaign material, including opposition to the Government's mandatory internet filtering proposal. Party convener Fiona Patten said that although the term 'sex' in the party's website URL could be responsible for its filtering woes, the party is unlikely to consider a name change: 'I think the fact that people are still blocking our site just because of the word "sex" in the name shows that we need this political movement.'"

Most of the filters are made somewhere else and block all sorts of strange stuff in the default lists. We used to have 'New Guinea' blocked for RACISM. It was easier to to turn that filter off. Our current filters decided to start blocking a local pizza joint as PORNOGRAPHY. Does anyone know why the categories are always in all caps?

Because the product started out being developed on MS-DOS 2.0, and back then it took extra effort to support both upper and lower case, so they just went with upper-case. And like most Windows software, it was modified just enough to work with the newest operating system.

Maybe they also have a few other words mixed in that the filters object to:

"We're upset about business blocking us - we have absolutely no pornographic content whatsoever!" said Marsha Sexsmith, a resident of Cockburn Street, Originally from Scunthorpe, England, she's an anthropologist. She's traveled to Matiti (French Polynesia), Clitheroe, Fistina, Woody Bay (UK), Pisset, Balsac, and Pussy (France), Bastardo (Italy), Hashita (Israel), Youfukyou and Fuxingmen(China), Labia (Egypt), Licking (US) and Titicaca (Titicaca, Peru, Titicaca Creek in the US, and of course Titicaca court in Western Australia). "It's only in Titicaca, Washington, that I saw anything as silly as this! Even Suckstem and Cassman Spring (also in the US) weren't as bad!" Ms. SexSmith was commenting from her campaign office on Fistula Street in Queensland.

The web filters are mandated by Australian law IIRC. There was a list published a while ago on wikileaks [wikileaks.org] of all of the websites that were being blocked... some were not offensive at all.

"sex" is a word associated with pornography, but also with a huge number of non-pornographic meanings.

"sex party" on the other hand has less non-pornographic meanings. A google search for "sex party" gives the Australian political party web site as the first result. A number of the other results on the first page are not related to political parties. A google image search for "sex party" with safe search turned off gives a page full of skin.

Unfortunately the main flaw in your rational is that most companies work with a whitelist rather than a blacklist. I've only worked at a few places with a blacklist, and they are usually set up for specific sites, rather than terms.

The fact users can get to an other political party's site rather than the ASP's site would generally mean it's been whitelisted. I'm sure a friendly word to the network admin would open it up. Then again, why are you looking up political material at work? I can't think of anywher

I can't remember anywhere I've ever worked where you were allowed to surf the fucking internet.Some jobs obviously would require it - blogger, journalist, Corporate PR person searching out bad publicity fires to put out, etc.

And I've never worked anywhere with a total ban on personal browsing during work hours. I just recently handed in my notice from a Fortune 50 company with something on the scale of 100,000 employees, and even they allow reasonable personal use of company resources.

Suit yourself. In that case I'll be spending my lunch hour in the internet cafe, with my phone turned off.

What's that, you'd gotten used to me being reachable by phone during lunch break? Well, that's just tough cookies, trust and flexibility go 2 ways. Treat me like we're in kindergarten and I'll be happy to return the favor.

I can't remember anywhere I've ever worked where you were allowed to surf the fucking internet.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say none of your jobs have permitted employees to surf the net. Sure, most (tho anecdotal evidence says not all) bosses would be quite pissed if a worker wasted away his entire day browsing the net, or even just wasted enough time that it impaired his work performance. But it would be a bit tyrannical for a company to ban all net access. I've only even heard of such a policy a few times, and always in very low skill (e.g. customer service phone monkey) positions.

"Reasonable, personal use" is usually the term I've seen. It's seen as better for the boss if you jump on the net for five minutes rather than taking an hour off to stand in line at the bank or other variations on the theme. That being said we're running into a generation that complain about us blocking Facebook, IM and streaming audio / video.

Hi! Nice to meet you. I am that generation. I'm a millennial, raised in a schizophrenic constant bombardment of media chunks measured in minutes. Consequently I rarely focus on anything for more than an hour without starting to fall asleep. If I'm not able to sprinkle a few random periods of entertainment into my work day, I will lose focus and literally start to fall asleep. The upside is that I work faster than my predecessors when I do work, and I am capable of handling more work items at any given time.

Hi! Nice to meet you. I am that generation....One standard or no standard I say.

It seems to me that last bit you said conflicts with the rest of what you said, but maybe I just misunderstood.

The problem is that facebook and the like can become too much of a distraction for some (and it doesn't seem to matter that much what generation they belong to). Just like most people can have the occasional alcoholic beverage without any problems, some people become addicted.

If you want one rule to bind them all then that rule is going to be "no facebook for you!".

I was talking about standards of performance. If I can do the same job as one of my colleagues while watching YouTube videos, but if he did the same his performance goes down, that doesn't mean I should be barred from watching YouTube videos. I am not responsible for other people's deficiencies. If I can do my job to the same level expected from everybody else it should not matter that I intersperse snippets of non-work into my day. Especially considering that if I were forced to drop those to zero, my prod

You obviously have no love for your job - you know you could do your job better, but you are comparing your performance to somone who does the same job badly. Don't fucking do that... don't say your co-workers are shit so that you can do what they do with your hands tied behind your back. Little priveledges are that - little.

Same here. As long as people don't go to excess and spend all day on it then there is seldom a problem. For a bank or something where security is an issue I've seen personal use banned outright (and rightly so) but rarely at other workplaces.

I remember one guy resigning not long after ebay was banned at one place (ebay traffic dwarfed everything else). He was running a business on it when he was supposed to be doing graphic design work completely unrelated to ebay.

Exactly so. Most of the issues with excessive or improper use shouldn't be handled at a technical level. It's standard 'not doing the job' disciplinary action. We've blocked Facebook et al, mostly because of the traffic. Before the block social networking was about 25% of the traffic through our proxies.

Blocking facebook is a good idea in general, but companies that block entire sites like that should also have a computer free from the blocks, like in the break room or something. It's entirely reasonable to want to check facebook before leaving work for the day.

Having a separate computer and network would also let companies avoid security issues that unfiltered internet access can present, and also have a network to put visitors on who come in with unsecured laptops. Setup a separate, unfiltered network,

Even more than the word itself, consider the combination of letters, since it's a URL. For example, anything with the pattern *sex* would be filtered, whether it was actually a word or not -- consider "expertsexchange.com" or something.

My favorite is http://www.powergenitalia.com/ [powergenitalia.com] - in a splash of irony, they do actually sell "specialized battery products", just not the kind your filthy mind is currently imagining.

I have to admitt that seeing www.sexparty.org.au does not make me think of politics at a first glance. But it's interesting however that filters will pick it up as adult content when i'm sure other sites contain sex somewhere in the url - for example deliveriesexpress.com.au. I assume since sex is the first part of the url it is picked up. What about sextantrepairs.com or any of these http://www.morewords.com/starts-with/sex/ [morewords.com] ?

I support your outrage, As an Oz resident, and a netizen. This is not cool. I also am considering to leave, although a pa$$port burning is not yet on the cards. Do not forget the Australia gov' has a pretty nasty track record in a lot of areas. At least this info is being leaked/discussed, not completely censored.

I'm an Aussie living abroad. I have been to many, many countries and I've got to say, that there will always be something wrong with most places. I think it is once thing to see something bad happen in your own country, like seeing your own house in flames is worse than your neighbours, but you can never find a country which is how you like it.

This story is a beat up anyway, this is just private internal networks, they can block the Labor, Liberal, National, Greens or whoever they want for all I care. I think doing stupid shit in your business is part of the great freedom that Australians enjoy.

Getting back to the point, where will you run to? The world is full of conflicting social agendas. There will always be things you can say and things you can't. I caught my Chinese girlfriend wearing this extraordinarily racist T-shirt. She told me that she should be able to say what she wants about the Japanese because she doesn't like them. She can wear it on the streets of Beijing without a hassle, but would be at least severely reprimanded in most "free" countries.

I have not been to Australia for close to a year, but last time I was there, the amount of stuff you can get away with saying, looking at online, keeping for personal use or doing in your bedroom was astoundingly high by world standards. My advice is that unless Family First and Christian Democrats form a coalition government or Sharia law is established in Western Sydney that moving somewhere else for more freedom may be a counterproductive piece of theatrics that only has the consequence of giving the country one less supporter of liberal policies.

By all means, if you want to own a big gun, go to somewhere like the Philippines, if you want drugs and porn, you could go to Amsterdam. If you want to escape racism, you can go to somewhere diverse like Singapore or if you want to indulge in racism, just pick any other country in Asia. If you want freedom to be in a legally sanctioned Homosexual marriage, you can go to Belgium, or if you want freedom to say you hate homosexuals you can go to Saudi Arabia. But I guarantee you, something about wherever you are will piss you off and you will act like your standard whiny Aussie expat moaning about how Australia does X better. Something akin to the flood of wannabe refugees threatening to pour over the Saint Laurence river in either direction whenever some unpopular policy comes up on one side of it.

The problem with Australia is the bitching. Some people complain about "hostile workplaces" so they bring in filters to block porn. The porn filter apparently blocks this "sex party" because someone thought it referred to a site about orgies so it is met with another tide of complaints.

Australia is unfair, just like the planet on which it is located. By all means, decry your country at the pub, but just remember, that kind of behaviour is enough to get you flattened by rednecks in other free countries. And honestly, if you think redacting a non-binding discussion paper released to the public is on the same level as what happens in the "Democratic People's Republic" of Korea or the German "Democratic" Republic, then that just shows how sheltered you are in your little country and how much of a shock you'd get if you left.

Ditto - I've been away from home for 2 years now in the relatively civilised wilds of a first world nation and in a rapidly developing third world nation. I agree entirely - there's no place like home. You don't know how good you have it in Oz until you leave. We really are the lucky country.

Somewhere between "This will be law now" and "Hey guys, wouldn't it be awesome if we filtered all the vowels out of the internet?" That is, after the people who are proposing actually make a proposal, and are not just considering it.

The public should know who's making such proposals from the beginning, so they can vote them out in the next election. You make not like to see the process, but the rest of us might like to know how they make the sausage and what they put into it. We certainly have that right. We should put the entire government in a glass house to keep it honest, regardless of whether it makes it a bit less "efficient".

Seriously, what kind of strawman are you smoking? I said nothing about

I'm detecting less hostility and more courtesy, so I'll also tone it down a bit.

Well first off, unlike a government, I'm not dictating any policy to my boss, so that analogy doesn't hold up.

The government is not dictating a policy to us, so your take on reality doesn't hold up. It's a proposal. Under the analogy, a proposal for a law becomes a proposal for a project. Both, if they get anywhere, are high stakes for their respective "bosses", both "bosses" have to live with the changes, neither the engineer n

Parliament should have cameras, their homes no.. unless they wish regulate what we do in our homes, in which case there most definitely should be cameras in theirs.

You see, I think this is unfair. Parliament should be held under the same laws as us, but not unduly punished. If they pass a law that extends to behaviour in our homes, then they should have to obey that law in their homes, and that's about it.

Also, the phrase "unless they wish [to] regulate" is a little bit disingenuous because often these laws

Australia may rank 16th on the Press Freedom Index [wikipedia.org], But unfortunately Australia doesn't have US 1st Amendment-like protection for political free speech. (The High Court has ruled that it's heavily implied in the constitution, but it's not absolutely stated). There's no "You can't block that, it's political free speech!" kind of laws.

The first amendment wouldn't apply here - a private employer has every right to block whatever they wish, it's not a freedom of speech issue.

The amendment would not apply because its scope is limited to government, indeed, but it is a freedom of speech issue. The concept of freedom of speech is independent of the legal framework devised to protect it. Private censorship is still censorship.

[...]many of Australia's rights are "implied" in the constitution and exist merely through the High Court's "creative" interpretations. Such as the implied right for Political speech in Australian Captial Television Pty Ltd v. Commonwealth (1992) which was also extended in 1994 in Theophanous v. The Herald And Weekly Times. Australia also took an active role in 1948 when drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Unfortunately, many attempts to introduce entrenched Human Rights into the constitution such Lionel Murphy in 1973 and 1985 with the Federal attorney-general have failed before they even reached the stage of a referendum.

And if you compare it with other countries which do have explicit rights, it all comes down to how the courts interpret it anyway (Just take a look at the US). Mind you, I think even ethically I don't see why blocking access to anything from a corporate network is bad, in today's highly networked world it's hard to argue you're depriving anyone of anything and with even high profile sites being targeted by malware and hackers you

The first amendment didn't seem to stop the US from being down at number 20, below a lot of other countries that didn't have such constitutional rights, and didn't stop it being even further down, past number 30, back in 2008, with 2007 being an even lower point.

CORPORATE. CORPORATE filters block access to the website from within their PRIVATE CORPORATE NETWORKS. Companies can filter the web searches of their employees however they please. How is this in any way close to news?

If the Australian government was filtering internet access to its citizenry that prevented access to political party websites, that would be a problem. But that's not what this article is about - the article's about companies keyword-restricting access to potentially inappropriate websites from computers on their networks. This is a spectacularly common thing for a company to do, but who cares? It's a private network. They can admin it how they like.

You know, I know this is in the context of a business, but if you're going to name your political party the Sex Party, do you even stop and think about it? Are they allowed to run ads during prime time? Are you going to have 8-year-old asking, "Daddy, what does sex mean?" I'm not sure I'd vote for a party that put me through that kind of hassle.

Breaking down taboos about talking about such matters is ones of their aims. My daughter is 7 and long past asking such questions: she knows google and the internet and will look it up herself, even with filters on the PC. While most of the nastier bits of life have not been covered yet, kids at that age need to know the basics; what sex is, why you don't post personal details to the net, etc.

The idea of keeping kids ignorant until their 18 simply isn't an option, and honest, healthy discussion of such topics, rather than treating _adults_ in an infantile manner to preserve false innocence is part of the Sex Partys platform.

You know, I know this is in the context of a business, but if you're going to name your political party the Sex Party, do you even stop and think about it? Are they allowed to run ads during prime time? Are you going to have 8-year-old asking, "Daddy, what does sex mean?" I'm not sure I'd vote for a party that put me through that kind of hassle.

And see THIS kind of retardedness is EXACTLY why THE GOVERNMENT thinks it's OK to censor the internet.

oh look it says "SEX" - WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN

(ie insert knee-jrek reaction here)

The FUNNY thing is, supposedly this is all about *stopping* those people who are constantly thinking about children (ie the paedophiles).

From Wikipedia (ie. probably authored by them, but still they're obviously serious):Censorship
* Bring about the establishment of a truly national classification scheme which includes a uniform non-violent erotica rating for explicit adult material for all jurisdictions and through all media including the Internet and computer games.
* Introduce an R and X rating for computer games.
* To overturn mandatory ISP filtering of the Internet (see Internet censorship in Australia) and return Internet censorship to parents and individuals.
* Oppose mandatory retention of all Australian users' internet browsing history and emails by ISPs for at-will inspection by law enforcement agencies, and support strong judicial oversight over the ability of law enforcement to access individuals' internet and email data.

Education
* To bring about the development of a national sex education curriculum as a first step in preventing the sexualisation of children.
* Development of a national internet education scheme for parents.

Equality
* To enact national anti-discrimination laws which make it illegal to unfairly discriminate against people or companies on the basis of job, occupation, profession or calling.
* To bring about equal numbers of men and women in the Parliament through enabling the Federal Discrimination Act to have jurisdiction extending to political parties.
* To create total equal rights in all areas of the law for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
* Overturn racist laws that ban Aboriginal people from possessing erotic and sexual media in the Northern Territory.
* Ensure the sexual rights and freedoms of the disabled and elderly.

Health
* To enact national pregnancy termination laws along the same lines as divorce law -- which allow for legal, no-fault, guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.
* The listing of Viagra, Cialis, and other drugs used to treat sexual dysfunction, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
* Overturn restrictions on aid to overseas family planning organisations that reference abortion.

Protection of children
* Convene a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the nation's religious institutions.
* Develop global approaches to tackling child pornography which focus on detection and apprehension of the producers of the material.

Workplace relations
* Ensure that the introduction of paid maternity leave is fair and equitable for small businesses.
* Abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia.

They sound astonishingly sane.
Sadly, I don't think that they have a snowball's chance in hell of doing too well, as they're going to step on far too many toes. But this is still one of the sanest platforms I've seen.

Hard to argue with those demands. Of course, while on the one hand it's fairly broad for a "sex party", there are still a lot of areas that aren't covered at all -- economic policies, environmental policies, foreign relations, etc, etc.

Anyway reading through it it shows a stunning amount of common-sense, practicality and rationality. Really the Labor party should dump the shit that's currently in their social policies and replace it verbatim with this and they might be back on track.

Compared to the regular crop of nut-bags we get holding the balance of terror in the Senate, these ones are at least easier on the eye. If they do less than Steve Fielding, we're ahead. I know, but my motto is "Aim low, you'll never be disappointed."

I couldn't care if it was 14, 14,000, 14,000,000 or just 1 person. Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.

The GP probably read the summary wrong like I did. If I had RTFA, I would have realized that it wasn't the great firewall of OZ blocking information about a political party (which would have been anti-democracy), it was instead a sensationalistic bit about a few corporate web-filters blocking the site.

For a long time the system where I work blocked games.slashdot.org because it had games in the name. They don't block general news sites but some sites are banned on the grounds of "Entertainment". They have a process where you can argue for sites to be permitted but frankly I would just go outside the office and use the free wifi on my eee 701. Its easier and more likely to succeed.

Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.

This is a side effect.

This has nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with bandwidth availability.At my company, we set up DansGuardian, which is probably the same filter used here.DansGuardian can block sites based on their URL (or reverse DNS), by keywords filtering (a word can block a link), and content filtering.

Because we have bandwidth problems (in this case, people at work abusing it), DansGuardian was installed.It was first configured to use all the possible filters, but after a few days

Recently, one of the employees streamed 800 megabytes, meaning that he watched something on TV during 2 hours during work hours !
Now, this site is blocked, and I'm pretty sure it contains political insights, but frankly, why do you consult such sites AT WORK ?

I think a serious talk with that particular employee would be a better idea than just blocking that site.

I can figure out why it isn't wrong to block url's with sex in the url (it's 99% of the time it's going to be correct)

I dispute your claim that A. only 1% of accesses to domains matching/.*sex.*/ are accesses to safe-for-work domains, and B. these 1% are unimportant. Think of a word ending with S followed by a word starting with EX, like "Experts' Exchange" (before they added the hyphen) or "Australia's Exports".

As one of the few parties putting censorship up as one of their most visible policies I hope that their voters will number more than 14. Unfortunately there are a whole load of other important issues going on here in Australia at the moment and you only get the one vote. You can apportion preferences accordingly but in the end you're still only deciding on one candidate.